


Take Me Apart

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Author's Recommendations [19]
Category: Punisher (Comics), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, M/M, Masturbation, Pining, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 19:09:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: David puts Frank back together.





	Take Me Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kokopellifacetattoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokopellifacetattoo/gifts).



> Me and Juice have just the biggest fuckin' brains, guys. I'm putting this in both Punisher (comics) and The Punisher (TV) because Juice designed David as a fusion of both TV and Comics Micro, so. 
> 
> This takes place significantly before the other fic in the collection so far.

There’s something about David’s hands.

David knows how to hold a gun. Might even be able to fire one, if push came to shove, but the roughness of his fingers isn’t like the roughness of Frank’s. The calluses on David’s hands aren’t from weapons, the scars on his knuckles are not from thrown punches. David is, in many ways, a soft man. Stronger than he looks, but soft, kind in a fundamental way that Frank hadn’t believed people could really still be.

The calluses and scars on David’s hands are in strange places, left from holding strange tools. David spends half his time with his hands buried in the guts of some machine or another, and he has more specialized tools than Frank has guns, which is a feat. His fingers are strong and sure as they move between the tools resting on the flesh of Frank’s chest and into the mechanical parts that make up his arm. Frank feels open and exposed, most of the dermal plating pried off and set aside to be re-fabricated later. David has the equipment, has all the tools, and he takes care of Frank in all the technical ways Frank can’t manage on his own.

Frank doesn’t like to think of it, but it’s true. In the privacy of his own mind, it’s even comforting. David cares for him, cares _about_ him, not just as a project he’s invested a lot of time and labour into, but as a human being who can be injured.

There are precious few who still see him as a human being.

David doesn’t talk when they’re like this, not unless he’s lecturing Frank on a particularly bad slap-job repair Frank’s made between stopping in for real help. David used to talk, a steady play-by-play of what he was doing and why, asking if this hurt or warning that something might pinch or burn. Frank had snapped at him one to many times; now he works quietly unless he has a question or needs an extra hand.

David doesn’t talk, but he does hum, and he emotes a good deal. He’s got his brows pinched together, eyes narrowed behind his glasses, mouth pressed in such a thin line it almost disappears into the mess of his beard. He’s utterly focused on the task, clever fingers employed in replacing something, and Frank can focus on the tingling, electric discomfort shooting through his arm, or he can focus on the way David’s lips part, soundless words forming; Frank can’t read lips, but if the subtle nod to David’s head is any clue, he’s lip syncing whatever song it is he’s been humming.

It’s all, the entire situation, intensely intimate in a way Frank’s not sure he’s allowed to enjoy. David, completely absorbed in the intricate workings of getting Frank’s augments repaired, utterly focused on nothing and no one but Frank. It takes a good deal of trust to be, quite physically, opened up this way where someone else can see, much less to allow someone else to touch, but it hasn’t, until this very moment, occurred to Frank to question that trust.

He trusts David implicitly. Trusts him to be the one to keep him running, to see him laid out like this, all the strange working parts exposed and vulnerable, and knows, in a way that he can’t shake, that David will not hurt him. David will not take him apart or hurt him simply to see if he can.

In all likelihood, David wouldn’t even think to do such a thing, because David is, fundamentally, a good man.

As Frank watches, David blindly sets one tool back on Frank’s chest (it’s warm, and when the metal touches Frank’s skin, the fingers of his working hand flex against the edge of the work table he’s laying on) and, still not looking, grabs another, rotates it deftly in his fingers, and returns to whatever it is he’s doing.

If Frank asked, David could walk him through every motion. David would probably be delighted to, actually; David likes Frank. That’s part of where the trust comes from; David considers them to be friends, even when Frank insists he doesn’t have friends. David laughs at him, gives a sarcastic agreement, and then asks if he’s going to stay for the next meal, or offers to grab him something to eat to take with him. David cares about him, as one human to another.

David takes care of him because they’re friends.

As revelations go, it’s not much of one, but very suddenly, Frank knows he can’t ask any questions, or say anything at all. He’s not sure what it is; the sudden jolt of connectivity in his arm, sensation flickering through the wiring until he can _feel_ the cool table under him, metal to metal, or the emotional upheaval of realizing that the man sitting beside him putting him back together is not just some clinical nobody drifting in and out of his life, but an honest to god, actual friend.

Maybe it’s both.

Maybe it’s something else entirely.

It doesn’t really matter what the reason is, because very suddenly, Frank finds himself intensely aroused. David is much too close -- David’s got both hands fiddling with the inner workings of Frank’s right arm, he’s sitting in his stupid rolling chair right up alongside the table. If he looks up from his work, it’s not going to take much to notice the state Frank’s suddenly in -- the entirely inappropriate state, given the circumstance -- so Frank can’t talk, and he can’t move, and even keeping still and silent he’s not sure he can cool his blood enough for this not to become some kind of Problem.

The narrow, sleek tool is returned to its place on Frank’s chest, laying in a neat row with the rest, and David hums, head angled to one side as he feels around, just his bare fingers. With the new connections in place, through some process Frank doesn’t understand or care to learn about, Frank can feel him running those fingers over various substructures and wires. His arm, which for so long had just been hardware -- astonishingly functional, sophisticated hardware, but still just an unfeeling tool wired to his body -- is suddenly alive. He can feel; it’s different than what he can feel through his skin, it’s muted, but he can _feel,_ and that alone is a sort of electric, burning want suddenly racing though him.

He can feel David’s big, clever fingers pressing and aligning and straightening things in his arm; the softness of them, the rough press of callus, the dexterity and care behind every motion. It’s not sexual, or it’s not meant to be, but there’s something…

Something about David’s hands.

“Can you feel this,” David asks, finally looking to Frank’s face, and Frank feels warm, but he guesses he must not be blushing as deeply as he feels. Blood flow directed elsewhere is likely helping there, for a given value of help, but he’s definitely not fully hard yet either.

He makes himself nod.

David grins, pleased, and looks back to his hands. “It should only hurt if something breaks, so me touching should just be mostly pressure, maybe some texture. If it hurts, I need to know now, cuz that means something's not calibrated right. Unless… well, does anything hurt?”

Really, Frank almost wishes something did. Pain might help with other troubles.

“No,” he finally manages, and there must be something in his tone, because though David nods, his brow furrows.

His fingers press in and for a moment, David seems focused on getting everything in just the right alignment, a task Frank usually thinks is a hideous waste of time when it’ll all end up loose within the first few hours as Frank moves. Now, he’s torn between wanting it finished and wanted David to linger, and the reasoning there has nothing to do with the practicality of keeping the wiring relatively neat.

Finally David says, “I know you can deal with a lot of pain,” as his fingers glide over what’s left of the dermal plating, along the back of his arm to settle on his wrist. David gives comfort through touch; he’s been like this for as long as Frank can remember, but in this particular case it doesn’t do much. “But if you’re constantly dealing with even mild nagging pain, you’re gonna tense up, and muscle tension throws off alignment, and it’ll get worse.”

His thumb is stroking small, absent circles around the ball of Frank’s wrist, and it’s honestly more than Frank really knows how to deal with in the moment. His whole focus is narrowed down to where David’s flesh meets the metal of his augmented arm, to the heat rising in his face, the nagging pressure of his dick thickening in his trousers. David’s eyes on his are concerned, and it’s a struggle to keep himself from trying to smack him away or drag him closer. More or less, Frank’s not sure he can handle either option.

Clearing his throat, Frank shakes his head just a little. “There’s no pain,” he says, and frankly the pride he feels at managing to get his voice to sound reasonably relaxed when his dick is rapidly swelling because David won’t quit and his body is a fucking traitor.

“That would be easier to believe if you’d stop denting the table, Frank.”

It’s only mildly mocking, which means David is actually worried, and the whole situation is just beyond anything Frank wants to deal with. He wants, suddenly, for David to go back to his usual snark and roll off in his chair to work on the refabs, give Frank a minute to sneak off to the bathroom so he can rub one out and things can return to normal.

The machinery of his arm whirs softly as he forces his hand to relax, and he can hear the faint crunch as his fingers release the edge of the work table. It’s not the first time he’s crumpled something, and the edges of David’s tables were battered before Frank ever touched them.

“I’m fine. Get yer shit off me, I need to sit up,” Frank says tightly, and David squints at him but finally -- _finally_ \-- takes his hand off the newly innervated metal of Frank’s wrist and does as asked. An old rule of their partnership; Frank doesn’t touch the tools unless specifically requested.

When Frank starts trying to sit up, David’s hand presses hard against his chest, pushing him back down. It’s the kind of thing that would usually make him snarl, but in the moment he grits his teeth against a wholly different noise, dick throbbing now.

“Just cool it, jeeze, I gotta unhook you from the diagnostic shit, just. Relax, man, it’s fine.”

It is, it’s fine, it’s perfectly fine, except all Frank can think at this point is how those fingers feel on his skin, the warmth and surety of them, how they would feel trailing down, touching just to touch, and when David pulls away disconnect all the wires hooking him to the monitoring equipment, it’s all Frank can do to keep himself silent. He’s so hard at this point he doesn’t know what to thank other than David’s bad vision and general obliviousness.

The second he can, he swings off the table, and god, even the rush of air over the exposed inner workings of his arm is so _much_ when he’s used to _nothing_. He can feel David staring after him, but there’s no sense of him following, and he doesn’t say anything, which is enough for Frank. If David noticed anything, Frank’s sure the mouthy bastard would have had something to say.

The bathroom door, thank god, has a lock. It’s one of the only places in David’s works pace that’s not piled with spare parts, machinery, tools, or equipment, and Frank shuts the door, locks it for good measure, and then fumbles his way into his jeans with his flesh hand. The idea of having to feel the roughness of fabric or the cool of the metal button, it’s too much. He’s used to doing things one handed by this point, and this isn’t exactly a two handed job.

As he closes his fingers around himself, his eyes drift shut. It’s not hard, really, to imagine his own rough grip as something else, something warmer. Calluses in just slightly different places. David wouldn’t clutch, David would be easy, smooth, not gentle because he knows Frank and Frank doesn’t do anything gentle.

Frank’s grip relaxes a little.

David’s hand would be steady, economical motions sped up as he experimented to figure out what Frank liked. He wouldn’t have it at first.

Strokes timed just slightly off from the impulsive twitch of his hips, not quite what he needs.

But David is a quick study. David, warm and chuckling at Frank’s eagerness, pressed up along behind Frank, chin on his shoulder, one arm around his shoulders, the other trailing around his waist to grip him just this side of rough once he found a comfortable rhythm. Rocking against him, letting him feel that he was into it too, his beard tickling at Frank’s neck. Quiet for once.

Frank’s metal fingers clamp onto the sink edge, not hard enough to damage anything but enough to steady him as he rocks forward, swaying. He imagines David’s arm tightening around him, holding him steady, muttering something meaningless but nice in his ear, big hand stroking faster now, dragging Frank to the end now.

David wouldn’t tease, David wouldn’t make Frank wait. David always delivers, doesn’t fuck around even when he’s mocking Frank.

When Frank spills into the basin of the sink, it’s with a choked of noise he has to smother into a cough. David will almost certainly have heard it, but he won’t ask if Frank doesn’t look sick, and he won’t. Even as he’s shuffling to clean up the mess, rinse out the basin, wash his hands, tucking himself away, he’s feeling better. More clear headed.

He sits heavily on the toilet, back bowed, hands draped between his knees. When he goes back out, David will give him a funny look. He can deal with funny looks.

More worrying is that soon enough the dermal plates will be ready to be replaced. His arm needs to be finished up, he can’t do his work with all the inner working out, easy targets for damage. And he can’t do the work himself, so it will be David, as it always has been.

David, with his warm, callused hands, caring, considerate, putting him back together when he can’t stop thinking about being taken apart.


End file.
